Wireless carriers employ cellular towers to establish large cells for wireless communications over vast physical areas, such as metropolitan or rural areas. The large cells or macro cells may cover areas of 1 km to 5 km in diameter. A cellular tower broadcasts wireless signals to and receives wireless signals from user equipment or mobile handsets that are located throughout the macro cells.
Various structures are located within the macro cell environment that obstruct, reflect or otherwise interfere with the wireless signals. For example, users typically attempt to use mobile devices inside structures such as homes and commercial establishments, among other structures. These structures may be constructed of high loss material, such as concrete or metal that block wireless signals from penetrating the structures. Reception within these structures is often poor and unreliable due to weak wireless signal strength. Poor reception is associated with inferior quality of service by the mobile user. Femto cells or micro cells are located within these high loss structures to route signal transmissions through existing broadband backhaul infrastructure to the macro network. Data may be transported wirelessly between the femto cells and the macro cells via a macro Serving Gateway (“SGW”) and a local packet data network gateway (“PGW”) using an S1-U interface. In this case, the data travels outside the femto cell to the macro SGW and back inside the femto cell to the local PGW. This is known a traffic tromboning and is undesirable because it adds latency to data communications.
What is desired are systems and methods of optimizing a Serving Gateway location associated with femto cells. It is also desired to have systems and methods of avoiding traffic tromboning on a S1-U interface and avoiding frequent Serving Gateway relocation between a home premises and a macro environment during interrupted coverage at the home premises.